High night-time blood pressure may be linked to an increased risk for congestive heart failure, according to a study conducted by the Uppsala University, Sweden.
Congestive heart failure (CHF) is one of the most common, costly, disabling, and deadly diseases. Once diagnosed as having CHF, patients have a 1 in 3 chance of dying within 1 year and a 2 in 3 chance of dying within 5 years. The death rate associated with CHF even exceeds that of most cancers.
The major causes of CHF are hypertension and coronary heart disease, and high blood pressure (BP) is suggested to be the most important risk factor for CHF.
Erik Ingelsson, M.D., Ph.D., of Uppsala University, and colleagues studied BP characteristics of 951 elderly men, free of CHF.
They found out that seventy men developed heart failure during follow-up, and an increase in night-time blood pressure and the presence of ?nondipping? blood pressure (BP that is at least as high at night as during the day) were associated with an increased risk of CHF.
“This indicates that night-time BP patterns may be important in development of CHF and that a traditional office BP measurement does not capture all of the increased risk that an increased night-time BP conveys,” the authors said.